Fingers Through Your Hair
by Aleka
Summary: A prequel to the movie "The Believer" about a young Jewish boy with Nazi beliefs. Sex, violence, swearing and anti-semitism lies within.


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Author's Note: I do not share Danny's opinion of Judaism. I observe it, and I consider it, but I do not share it or like it. Rachel's faith is close to my own. Please read :) And don't flame.

"You hear the word Jew and it's automatic contempt. It doesn't matter who you are or what you believe in or don't believe in. It's in our nature to hate them." His deep, painful blue eyes shone with a vile passion. "They killed God."

The place was the library parking lot. There were only five people listening to the insanely articulate seventeen-year-old. But the ones that surrounded him, embraced him. 

Rachel Harris didn't see how he even got _five_ people to listen to his spiel. But she was one of them. 

She was about to pass by on her way to her car after her shift at the library. But he spoke with such fire and life that she had to stop and listen. Earlier, barely fifteen minutes ago, he had taken out books on the Holocaust. She had stamped them for him. 

Why would an anti-Semite want to read a book about the Holocaust?

"Are you like a Nazi or something?" someone called. 

The boy looked at his watch. "I hate Jews," he said, a significant look in his eyes. "I gotta go."

The circle of people broke up, going in separate directions. 

Rachel took her keys out of her pocket and jogged to catch up to him. "Hey, kid," she called. 

The kid, who was not much younger than her, turned around, and looked at her impatiently. 

She saw his eyes up close and they startled her enough to take her breath away. They were so powerful. They evoked fearful awe in her. 

"What?" he asked. 

"You think you're like Hitler or what?" Rachel shook her head. "Who are you to judge an entire faith?"

"I'm Danny Balint," he said, smirking. 

"Good for you."

"You didn't have to listen," Danny told her. "I don't give a shit if you agree with me, but don't run after me just to tell me you think it's _wrong_ to think the way I do."

"I never said I thought you were wrong," she said indifferently. "I just want to know what makes you think you're God."

"I don't."

"Really."

"Yes, really." He peered at her closely, and Rachel suddenly felt raped. It was a strange, frightening feeling. He was standing five feet away with his hands jammed in his pockets. He was skinny, and with his blond hair, he looked like any other teenage boy. But she could tell how much he wasn't like any other teenage boy. He asked, "What's your name?"

"Rachel."

"Ah."

"What, 'ah?'"

"Rachel's a Jewish name."

"It's a Christian name," she snapped. "It _was_ a Jewish name up until the Reformation."

His grin broadened. "You know your stuff."

"I read. I work at a library."

"So you're not a Jew," he said carefully, tilting his head with tentativeness.

"Even if I was, I wouldn't admit it to you in a parking lot at ten o'clock at night."

"You think I'd hurt you?" His voice held no surprise or sign of being insulted. He almost sounded pleased. Proud. 

"What I think is you're a neo-nazi, Danny."

That smile again. It made her cold…but warm. "You know your stuff," he murmured again, stepping closer to her. 

Her first instinct was to back away, but she wanted to stay. See what he'd do.

Rachel searched his face for a sign. Why did he make her feel so naked? She was, or at least she was _raised_, a pristine Catholic, but when his eyes met hers…God..

"You made me miss the train," he said, and her heart fluttered wildly as if he had just said the most romantically seductive thing she'd ever heard. And he knew it. 

At the age of nineteen, Rachel still lived with her parents, in the basement. She paid rent, but she still had to fight her little brother for the sugar bowl at breakfast, and she still had a curfew. If she wasn't home by eleven, there would be hell to pay. 

"Sorry," Rachel muttered. "Come on, I'll drive you."

"You're offering a ride to a skinhead you just met?" he laughed. 

"Don't you have to shave your head to be a skinhead?" she asked with a smile. 

"I will," Danny said firmly. 

After unlocking the passenger side door, Rachel walked around the car and climbed in, starting it. The radio blasted, and she grimaced, turning it down. "Sorry," she muttered shyly. 

"It's okay," Danny told her, looking gentle for the first time. "Why do you sound shy all of a sudden?"

He leaned forward as she was about to pull her seatbelt across her body. He reached out a hand to stop her, letting his hand stay on her waist. "You wondering what kind of person you invited into your car?"

Rachel shook her head, her entire body freezing up at his touch. "I know what kind of person you are."

"Oh, really? Would you mind enlightening me?"

Smiling enigmatically, she shook her head again.

He looked slightly annoyed for a moment, but then he just smiled back. 

There was something beautifully tragic about him when he smiled. She had a feeling he had never been truly happy, and somehow, that was indescribably desirable. She had never been truly happy either, so maybe that was why she slid her hand up to cover his, and said, "Kiss me, okay?"

Danny nodded, and moved his hand slowly from her waist up her body until he was cradling her face. He kissed her harshly, not wasting any time as he slipped his tongue in her mouth. 

Rachel, of course, felt no love for this boy. She had only set eyes on him a half-hour ago. But it was not lust or passion that drove her into his arms either. It was his screaming, crying tragedy. His mournful hatred. It was the frightened loneliness masked by intolerance and contempt in his shocking blue eyes. It was the feeling she had of protectiveness she had for him, and she didn't even know him. All she knew was that he was Danny Balint; '98's 17-year-old Nazi. And she wanted to protect him?

His fingers fumbled with buttons of her blouse. She pushed him away weakly. "Danny, I never said…"

"Bullshit," he snapped. "Cherry."

A grin spread over her brazen face. "You too."

He looked at her, and she realized that she was right. The strong, fearless anti-Semite was a virgin, and he was looking to lose it in the front seat of a car with a stranger. Just like her. 

"Okay," she muttered. 

"Okay what?" he demanded in a breathless, hurried rush. 

She smiled. "The backseat would be better."

Danny hesitated. Despite all his skewed views, he was still a boy with thoughts and feelings and morals, as hidden as they might be. For a long moment, he seemed to silently debate whether or not he would go all the way with this unknown girl. 

But the hesitation only existed in that moment. 

An hour later, Rachel was wearing his T-shirt, pressed into his thin, powerful arms, feeling like a slut as she listened to his heartbeat. 

Danny liked how small she seemed in his arms, and how she was being quiet. While he didn't have any regrets about the rite of passage, he could tell that she was having late second thoughts. 

"Did I hurt you?" he asked. 

She shook her head even though he had.

"Do you…" Danny fumbled for the words. "…want to cry…?"

"Not with you."

"Don't--" Danny's anger suddenly flared. "Don't _act _like I forced you into having sex with me, Rachel, I _didn't_, all right?"

"I just feel…"

"Like a slut?"

"Go to hell, Danny," she barked. 

"You would have lost your virginity in a similar situation if not with me, Rachel," he told her. "You're just a sexually repressed girl, too smart for your own limitations, and you were bound to give in sooner or later, and I'm betting on the sooner."

"You have no idea who I am."

"I can't make judgements about you? Gee, what am I supposed to do while you're busy labeling _me?_"

"You wanna know why I did it with you?" she demanded. "Because I look at you--and it's like you've got God burning out of you, and I am just so sick of being told what to believe and never really knowing what I'm believing in. I don't understand God, and you are just powerful…I wanted to feel something like heaven!"

"Rachel. God forgot about me years ago."

"God doesn't _forget_ about anyone. Certainly not someone like you. No could forget you." She shivered. "It's like…the world should have more people like you…but I don't know what would happen to it if that happened."

"If there were more people like me, the world would get rid of its sickness, I can guarantee that."

"Jews."

"Of course Jews."

"Danny, why would you take out books on the Holocaust? They don't glorify the Nazis, they sympathize with the Jewish victims."

"You can't hate something you know nothing about."

"Where did you _get_ your hatred, Danny?" She looked up at him. "Did you just wake up one morning and say to yourself, 'hmm Jews would be nice to annihilate.'"

"Are you hinting at something, Rachel? If you're hinting at what I think you are, I don't like it, and you can shut your mouth."

"What do you think I'm hinting at?"

"You think I was a Jew, don't you?"

"I think you are a Jew."

He pushed her away from him roughly. She felt a flash of pain in her neck as her head snapped back. "Take that back, you fucking whore."

"No." She put her hand to her jarred neck. "I won't."

"I'm not a kike."

"I didn't say kike. I said Jew."

"There's no difference."

"Danny…"

"Do you know how close I am to killing myself?"

She glared at him and saw that he was almost in tears. She reached out and ran her fingers through his soft blond hair. He had hurt her, but she still wanted to protect him. From himself. 

A Jew living inside the epitome of hatred could never survive. 

The next time Rachel ever saw Danny was over a year and a half later. He had a cocky, dangerously encompassing walk as he made his way through the crowd in the subway. Under a denim jacket, he wore a red shirt emblazoned with a black swastika. His blond locks were gone.

Rachel watched from the information centre that she now worked at as he spotted a young man wearing a skullcap. Danny followed him onto the train and stood next to him, towering above him like a blasphemous god. 

And all Rachel could think of was what it had been like to want to save him. And run her fingers through his hair. 

But the hair was gone. So was hope of saving Danny Balint, the boy trapped inside himself. 


End file.
